Gametrodon

Author: MrBlueSky

  • A Rant About Comics (Part 1) – Grump Week

    Grump Week is almost over, but since I’m getting all this frustration and annoyance out of my system, I figured I might as well take one last rant (okay, one of two) that’s kinda been bubbling in my system over the last few days, and smack it out onto paper. Ultimately, it’s about how I just don’t like American comics all that much, but it’ll encompass a little bit more than that.

    First, though, I want to talk about some cool shit I have been reading that I like.

    The Good Stuff

    I offer these to show that I’m not intrinsically biased against American comics. To prove that I’m giving them a fair chance, and that I’m not simply allergic to the medium. Also, because all of these rule, and you should read them.

    Hilda The 13th

    It’s a webcomic about a bunch of witches who do things with computers, with a lightly serialized story, but a strong focus on each individual comic having its own punchline. Feels like something that deserves to be in the papers. If, y’know, papers still existed, and were also okay with characters being queer. Anyway, it’s great, and you should read it.

    You can start from the beginning by clicking here.

    Guts County

    A light narrative comic about Heck, a bone farmer in hell, Chainsaw Wolf, a wolfman with a chainsaw for an arm, and their various friends/frenemies/acquaintances. Definitely NSFW, but mostly because of the punchlines, and not the art. Again, incredibly funny, and you should read it.

    Here, click this link and read it.

    Nothing Doing

    This comic summarizes very accurately how I felt being told me to be enthusiastic about AI at my last job. I got laid off from that job, along a huge chunk of my coworkers, so that the company could spend more money on AI.

    Nothing Doing has its own description, one that I think is perfect so I’m just gonna repost it: It’s a slice of life comic about loving your friends, and hating your job. It is incredibly funny, and again, you should go read it.

    Also, I’m pretty sure that putting the same link in my post multiple times is gonna screw my SEO, but I’d rather write for people instead of robots, so here’s another link to the comic.

    Wrestle Heist

    Imagine all the old wrestlers teamed up to finally give Vince McMahon what he so richly deserves: an ass beating, and stealing all of his stuff. That’s pretty much the premise of Wrestle Heist, in which a bunch of wrestlers forced into retirement decide they want payback, and start doing some Oceans 11 style stuff to get it.

    For the others I’m linking to their webpages. But for this one I’m linking to the place you can buy it, and the author’s store.

    And like. If you wanted to read it for free, you’re smart. You could probably figure out. I’m not saying that’s what I did, but I’m also not-not saying that I have atoned for my sins by purchasing the trades that were available at my local comic book store, and then pre-ordering the full collection. I think there’s a comic word for that second one, but I don’t know it, and I’m afraid that if I tried to find the term, my search engine would tell me to eat rocks.

    Anyway, I’m gonna end part 1 here, because it looks like my WordPress instance is actively dying from there being too much text in the full post. More in part 2.

  • Relic Arena – Grump Week

    Relic Arena – Grump Week

    The Autochess/Autobattler genre is kind of weird. It just showed up one day as a Dota 2 mod, got immediately yoinked by Riot for Team Fight Tactics, and then… well, then we didn’t get any more huge swings at the genre, at least on PC.

    And no, I don’t count Underlords.

    That’s not to say there aren’t any. Super Auto Pets, Storybook Brawl, Once Upon a Galaxy, and parts of games like Vivid Knight all cribbed elements of the OG autochess games, but like MOBAs before it, there are a fair number of game design choices that are less “intentional” and more “the engine already does that.” The end result? When bigger companies ripped off developed games in the genre, they took a lot of things that gave those original games their character and polished them out.

    To me, the biggest one of those changes is the focus on abstract positioning. (Okay, Nexus Amina does this, but it isn’t even out yet.)

    Enter Relic Arena.

    Most modern Autobattlers focus on upgrading characters, and choose to drop the entire concept of items that was present in the earlier games. Relic Arena goes the opposite direction. Instead of upgrading characters with abilities, the “characters” are a set of bodies. They’re just blank archetypes that can be swapped between rounds if needed.

    Here, it’s all about the items. Items taken from real history, like the Aztec Sun Stone, the Mask of Agamemnon, the Titanic… and the Porcelain Throne.

    It is a toilet. It turns into a toilet monster.

    Relic Arena is on the grump week list not because I think the game itself is particularly bad, but because… well, because I find the theme off-putting. It’s doing that “educational blurbs next to a statblock” thing I’m mostly familiar with from Age of Empires.

    The thing is, if it was just the items, I think I could handle it. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d be quietly amused.

    Except… it’s not just the items. In addition to items, at the start of each match, you pick a leader. Leaders give passive build-around benefits of some sort. And the leader selection is full of famous historical people like Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, Alan Turing, and Harambe, the dead gorilla from 2016.

    I know what you’re wondering, and yes. I have played most of my (very few) games as Harambe. They had a free weekend celebrating his death where he was unlocked for everyone.

    I dunno. It feels like the character select screen of a RTS from 2532, once these people are so long dead they’ve just become mythical figures, and not like… people? People whose visions of the future are actually still kinda being fought over and debated?

    I think I knew I was out when I unlocked the Native American skin for the Witch class of character. My internal monologue just went “Nah man. I’m out.”

    I’m good. I don’t want no part of this, no matter how clever your system of ordered item executions is. I don’t want to hear VTuber Abraham Lincoln in the corner of my screen talking shit when I get a killing spree.

    I. Am. Good.

    Okay, actually, while we’re talking about Harambe

    Look. Gorillas in zoos is just weird. There are a lot of animals where it’s just like, sure, whatever. Put it in an aquarium, put it in a cage. It’s not great for the animal, but it’s also not like the worst thing.

    I remember seeing a gorilla in a zoo an incredibly long time ago, and it’s stuck with me. Not because of any particular outrage or anger or anything, but just the sense of looking at it on the other side of the glass, looking at the eyes, looking at how it moved, and feeling this weird sickness in my stomach. A little part of me telling me “Yeah, no. No, this wrong. This is weird.”

    We shouldn’t keep gorillas in zoos.

  • Slay the Spire 2 – Grump Week

    Slay the Spire 2 – Grump Week

    Slay the Spire was the original digital deckbuilder as far as I’m concerned. At least, it was the first one everyone played.

    Since then, we’ve had countless riffs on the theme. Dicey Dungeons, Monster Train, X-Angels(maybe don’t click this one), Monster Train 2, and many more. I don’t think we get any of these without Slay the Spire. Some are a bit copy-paste like Across the Obelisk. Others were genuinely transformative like Inscryption.

    Now Slay the Spire 2 is here. The true sequel to the original. What does it bring us?

    Mostly more just Slay the Spire. 

    There was nothing I ever found particularly “bad” about Slay the Spire. I went a bit crazy for it, tried to persuade all my friends it was cool, and dropped out around 62 hours. It was genre-defining. Emphasis on the word “WAS”, because it’s been six years!

    I’ve gotten to ascension 10 in Slay the Spire 2, and I’ve “played” about 52 hours. The “played” is in quotes because a lot of that time was spent in multiplayer, and some some of that time was spent dead.

    I’m going to say one nice thing about Slay the Spire 2: I like that their multiplayer implementation isn’t turn-based, and lets everyone play cards freely. I would have liked it more if they hadn’t chosen to make their ascension system progress separately between single and multiplayer. 

    Here comes the new game, same as the old game.

    Games like Hades have proven that you can tell meaningful characters’ stories in roguelikes. Games like Inscryption have proven you can wrap in alternate puzzles and mechanics to deckbuilders. 

    Slay the Spire 2… does none of that. This is the level of mechanical and narrative innovation I grudgingly tolerate in Pokemon games, not what I expect from best-selling sequels to indies.

    So what do we get? There are also two new characters, bringing the grand total up to five. The Regent has an alternate resource pool that doesn’t refill between rounds and he spends for attacks. The Necromancer has a skull hand familiar that shields her. I don’t really love either of them to be honest, and as lame as it sounds, most of my time has been as the starting character: the Ironblood.

    There’s also multiplayer. A lot of my playtime was spent in multiplayer, and it was spent being dead.

    Overall

    Slay the Spire was a good game. But when I put it down, I was finished playing Slay the Spire.

    If you loved Slay the Spire, and your fundamental  problem with it was that there wasn’t enough of it, maybe this is for you. I don’t know what it says that I can play 50 hours of this, and remember virtually nothing about it. I’ve enjoyed all of the games that came after it more.

    Okay, except maybe Across the Obelisk.

  • Grump Week 2026

    Grump Week 2026

    It’s been a long time since I’ve done a themed week on the blog, hasn’t it? I think the last one was Lorcana, and before that it was Disgaea. Both were motivated by different things. In the case of Disgaea, it was blatant pandering to NIS America in the hope they would give a prerelease copy of the newest Disgaea game, and as far as I can tell, it worked. In the case of Lorcana, it was to perform some early analysis of the game and its pricing. 

    And now we have the third theme week: Grump Week. Why, you ask?

    I have been playing a pretty decent number of games over the last few weeks, and nothing has really grabbed me enough to write about. As an amateur writer, I perform my writing by entering a fugue state, and committing my mental state to paper as best I can. 

    I try to be positive about things. This does not mean that I write good stuff about things I think are waste of time and money. It means I try to focus my efforts on things that I like. Again, I don’t do this professionally, so I can decline to write about things I don’t like. 

    At least, most of the time. Dear readers, everything I’ve wanted to write about for the last few weeks has existed somewhere along the “Fuck this bullshit” spectrum. I have tried new things. I have branched out. I have played older things in the hope of finding something to review. Upon looking within, the only feelings I can find resemble spite. 

    So I’m going to give in to anger and write about some of these games I do not actually like. Also, I am going to be talking a lot of shit about things that other people really like. Often things my friends really like! Spoiler: one of these games is up for the Spiel! (And I think it’s a bit shit.)

  • Titanium Court

    Titanium Court

    I am not good at portioning things. I read books in a single sitting, sometimes two if they are especially long. I’ve eaten an entire box of Oreos over a single day, and back when I had peanut butter in the house, eating the whole thing with a spoon was not an uncommon occurrence. The same is generally true of games. When I pick up a new game, especially a roguelike, I find myself playing for hours at a time. 

    I’ve had Titanium Court for just under 2 weeks, and in that time I’ve played 10 hours of it. This is a shockingly short amount of playtime for something I like this much.

    Listing the labels that apply to this game is an exercise in pointlessness. They’re all there. It’s easy enough to put them out. But it’d be like listing the ingredients for a cake without the instructions. It’s mostly pointless. 

    I could tell you it’s a roguelike match-3 puzzle strategic tactics game, but I might as well tell you lemon, egg, butter, flour, sugar. Giving these descriptors might tell you why you wouldn’t like it(for example, if you really hate roguelikes or match 3 games, or are allergic to lemons), but it won’t tell you anything else about the experience.

    Anyway, welcome to Titanium Court.

    Gameplay

    It’s a little tricky to know where exactly to start with Titanium Court, but war is probably as good a place as any. Every day, the court will go to war, and you must lead it. War consists of multiple encounters, and each encounter has two phases, high tide and low tide. 

    An image of the video game Titanium Court during the High Tide phase of the game.

    High tide is the match 3 phase. In this phase, you manipulate the battlefield by swapping around tiles. Matching tiles removes them from the battlefield and grants the appropriate resource. Match water for water, match wheat for food, match hills for rocks, and forests for wood. 

    Each move removes a small amount of your bar, with multi-matches refilling it. When the bar empties, it’s time for low tide. 

    An image of the game Titanium Court during the Low Tide phase of the game.

    Low tide is the prep phase for the tactical strategy portion. In this phase, you can produce units and cast spells from the unit cards in your slots. You have five slots for units and spells, and they can be cast as many times as you have resources. Most spells are instantaneous, but producing units takes time. Units go down the time tracker on the left.

    Of course, it wouldn’t be a strategy game if it was just your units showing up. Enemy castles that are left on the board in Low Tide will produce units. Some attack your castle, some just sit around, and some don’t do much of anything. 

    Oh. Hmm. The word Enemy is in pink text over there. How very odd. Probably nothing to worry about.

    Narrative

    I find it tricky to talk about the narrative of Titanium Court for two reasons. First, I haven’t finished the game, and even if I did finish the game, I suspect that I don’t really understand what is going on with Magic, and the Enemy, and everything else. Second, I think it’s a big spoiler to reveal what I do think I know, but maybe I’m wrong. Third, the game’s tone is something I think is best experienced rather than revealed.

    That said, I can offer a sort of litmus test; a bit of a sampler, if you will, of whether or not you will enjoy the writing in the game. At one point, I was offered the option to skip a boss fight in exchange for watching a three minute musical number about Atlantic Salmon. During another, a funeral procession was held for a football that I routinely failed to protect.

    The game also has a few moments I’ve found surprisingly unsettling, and an antagonist I’ve grown to genuinely dislike, despite the the high amount of space between the player character and myself.

    Overall

    I quite like Titanium Court. I think it’s going to be one of those sleeper hits that doesn’t get quite enough attention until someone bigger than me picks it up, and it turns into a cult classic. It’s clever, well written, and manages to be genuinely unnerving at times despite its apparent simplicity.

    That said, I’ve also found it weirdly draining, and that it requires my full focus. It’s not particularly snacky, or bite sized, or other nice words we use to compare things to food that is easily consumed. It’s more like ice cream. Try to consume it too fast—stuff too much of it into your mouth—and you’ll get a headache.

    Still, I recommend it.

    If you’re still on the fence, may I suggest watching the trailer here?

    It also has a demo on Steam you can give a try.